It is well-known to hingedly attach a door to a body structure of a motor vehicle using one or more hinge mechanisms that facilitate opening of the door about a substantially vertical axis located close to a front or rear end of the door. Such doors are referred to herein as “swing open doors.”
It is a known problem with such a swing open door that a considerable amount of space has to be available to the side of the motor vehicle in order to permit the door to be opened sufficiently to permit ingress or egress. For example, if the length of the door is 0.9 m and it is required to swing open the door for egress then at least 60 degrees of door rotation may be required to enable egress via the door. Such a rotation will required a gap of approximately 0.78 m to the side of the motor vehicle to which the door is attached.
In order to overcome such a problem it has been proposed to mount the door so that it rotates about a substantially horizontal transverse axis from a closed position to an open position in which the door extends upwardly. Such doors are normally referred to as a ‘scissor opening door’ or a ‘scissor door’ and one example of a hinge mechanism that provides scissor operation is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 7,779,510.
Such a scissor arrangement has the advantage that very little space has to be available to the side of the motor vehicle to permit the door to be opened but has the disadvantage that when the door is opened it will project vertically above the normal roof line of the motor vehicle and so can be problematic if the motor vehicle is to be parked in a parking garage having a low ceiling height.
It is desirable to provide a motor vehicle with an apparatus to assist with the selection of the mode of opening of a door having a hinge mechanism permitting both scissor and pivot opening of a door. It is further desirable to provide a hinge mechanism permitting both scissor and pivot opening of a door.